Kinda sad. Checked up on that friend (actual friend, not like the ex-boss of deeply Q-Anon whacko fame) I was talking about last week and... yeah. Apparently he stayed down the anti-vaxxer rabbit hole.
So I won't contact him next time I'm in town.
I can tell you one reason why he was susceptible that my other friends generally aren't - he's an attractive, blond, affluent, super-privileged white guy who I suspect has never noticed his privilege.
And I guess that trumps intelligence.
Now I'm kinda afraid to make contact with anyone I've been out of touch with, because you never fucking know.
It is a loss. There's a whole category of grief related to folks we lose that are still there, but unreachable, and I think it's important to recognise it.
Look, if I think about it long enough, I realise I probably wouldn't have been comfortable with him anyway - I can't remember why I think this, but he was frequently immature and probably would have said exactly the wrong thing about my kid's gender.
But I have so few friends my age that I knew during a period of time that I wasn't an obvious mess who ever really saw me, and at the time, I think he did.
Ah well.
Maybe the point isn't about this friend at all, but that I have to stop moving and put down roots SOMEWHERE.
I actually did, in Munich, but life had other plans.
I'm getting so tired I want to just go back somewhere English-speaking, but the world is a nightmare, and I can't afford it anyway. So I need to figure it out here
One thing nearly everyone eventually finds out: There usually are no real friends. Having a real friend is something very seldom.
Also a real friendship stays alive even if you cannot see or hear from each other a long time, for example if someone had kept quiet because of having a rough time to go through.
If one accepts the thought that loose friendships do not need to be real/deep, it is also possible to stay in contact with Covid minimizers or other weirdos. I prefer not to.
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